I had the same issue with the Hairspray screening in San francisco. They had two lines, one for the 7:00pm (which was a private screening) and the 7:30 line (which wrap around the stairs and upstairs!) and they didn't let us know it was only one theatre, no one from the 7:30 line got in, we were all just told to leave at7:30 saying it was full. I was no. 30 or so down the line, so I know that they didn't let anyone from my 7:30 line in. Then we found out that they didn't know about the 7:30 screening and it was only one theatre that was already filled to capacity. They didn't offer any other ticket. The promoter was hiding her ass in the theatre, despite the fact that people started to demand that we get some form of explanation on why the evite link was even put up if they weren't going to honor it! After more then 70% has left, the manager gave out some "general use" movie tickets for those left behind and refuse to go.

I' got the number for the promoter and I will be calling her ass tomorrow! I'm writing a nice long email to the newline cinema and to my local paper about it. This was complete b.s.

This private HAIRDRESSER screening happened here at Dallas Northpark too. The printed evites were not honored at all they said only the hairdressers with hard passes were all that they were going to let in first well this was only a 280 seater theatre. Their had to have been over 600 people their. They were not helpfull in getting another screen or anything. Luckily they are showing it again tomorrow but that means we must chose between Chuck and Larry or Hairspray I am so upset with new line cinema beause these were official passes. The only good thing was that AMC gave readmit passes for any other movie. The hairdressers got goodie bags with hairspray movie buttons masscara and business cards. CRAZY. And these people gave screeners a bad name they were bum rushing the doors and had to be yelled at many times they apparently were not taught how to make ONE STRAIGHT LINE in beauty school. They were all very snobish and i am not giving Sebastian and Wella hair products any of my business. Apparently they did this to get their products looked at again they were first whatever year they came out and now due to all the competition they are now 7th OH BOO HOO!!

swiviol said: Well, I had screening tickets to see "Hairspray" tonight at the Detroit preview, and when we got to the theater we were turned away and told that it was a private screening only for HAIRDRESSERS. The manager was actually quite abrupt, and the promoter didn't really know what she was talking about. Anyone else have this problem? The tickets were through a thread from the other ("official") Fat Wallet forum, and it was through the official "Hairspray" website, not a remote site like Wild About Movies or anything like that.

It is horrible that you got turned away when you got there but imagine waiting all day and then being told at 7 that they were not going to honor your evite that really stunk!!!

The funny thing was that there were people here with the hard passes for a 7:30pm SCREENING!!! That were not honor either. They didn't reserved enough theatre and lots of people had to wait needlessly! They even told some people in the back not to leave and that they were going to start our screening later. They walked by a couple of times also count the people. They knew that they had wayyyy too much people, but instead of telling us what was going on, they waited until way later to do it! Not only that, the promoter didn't even offer us anything, no other free screening tickets nada, no explanation nothing to make up for any of this crap. AMC didn't offer anything until almost everyone left and those that were left were starting to make a riot! So piss! If I came to the screening late, say around 6- for a 7:30pm screening, I might not get in, but getting there at 5:00pm, were near the front of the line, and was turned away for people who came close to 7:00pm who had a "7:00pm" ticket got in, thats b.s.!

completely agree i want to know who i can voice my opinion to because our time is valuable and it was a waste granted i know this is FREE but we are the ones to tell people about the movies and get our friends in to spend the money!!They are lucky nothing bad happened over here because this was very uncalled for. The only kind of explanation we got was that it was a private screening for hairdressers that SEBASTIAN has teamed up with new line cinema to help promote themselves and they bought the theatre for the night and were not about to let anybody else in and that when they bought the rights to the movies the info was not portrayed to the movie promoters who are usually there for the screenings.

I wonder if that happened w/ all the screenings, then (that they were all for hairdressers)? Weird.

Oh, and mato3: At the screening I "went" to, they said that the hairdressers paid/donated a lot of money to have a private screening of "Hairspray," so perhaps that's why they got the goodie bags. I noticed those as well and was a bit jealous .

That wasn't said over here we were just told that Sebastian paid for the theatre for their clients ONLY. That they gave these passes to local salons only. But that is weird Detroit SAn francisco and DAllas texas screeners all got snubbed by hairdressers.

I hope you two get another chance to "see" it. Not to add salt to the wound a friend of mine actually made it in and she said it was TOTALLY AWESOME!!!! I guess i won't be watching chuck and larry tomorrow I'll be seeing Hairspray.

That Hairspray screening at SF was totally f*cked up!!! I felt sorry for the people who waited for the 7:30pm screening at 3pm and didn't get in while some people who had the 7pm ticket comes along at 6pm and got to see it. Total BS and toally pissed off! Ahh, just had to get that off my chest and add my 2 cents.

mato3 said: I hope you two get another chance to "see" it. Not to add salt to the wound a friend of mine actually made it in and she said it was TOTALLY AWESOME!!!! I guess i won't be watching chuck and larry tomorrow I'll be seeing Hairspray.

There's a "Chuck and Larry" screening in Detroit tonight as well, when I went to see "Charlie Bartlett" last Thursday night there (sneak preview) they were handing out tickets for C&L.

How was Charlie Bartlett? What have you seen recently? We saw superbad it was a total guy flick too many sexual refrences and we saw hot rod it was too dumb for me Teens loved it. Harry potter didn't quite do it for me but daniel was gorgeous. I I've seen through the thread that someplaces are already doing bourne and underdog kingdom and rush hour3 now those i want to check out have you seen any are they worth i??

The Hairspray screening in Chicago was totally messed up too! They had WAY too many people lined up and only the people with the hard passes were let in! We waited hours and hours and still we were not let in.It was so upsetting because they knew at 6 that they there were way more people in line than they had seats so basically they just wasted our time. They tried to hand out alternate screenings but none of them were for HAIRSPRAY or anything even remotely close to being as desirable and they did not even have enough of those to go around.

How was Charlie Bartlett? What have you seen recently? We saw superbad it was a total guy flick too many sexual refrences and we saw hot rod it was too dumb for me Teens loved it. Harry potter didn't quite do it for me but daniel was gorgeous. I I've seen through the thread that someplaces are already doing bourne and underdog kingdom and rush hour3 now those i want to check out have you seen any are they worth i??

I liked Charlie Bartlett, thought it was a cute movie, but I think it's geared more toward young people (which I am). Superbad looks funny, actually, I have not yet seen Harry Potter though I intend to. There was an Entertainment mag screening for Rush Hour 3, I think, if you look on the "actual" thread page you will find it. There was only 1 site with a Bourne screening here that I found, through one of the newspapers ... and I just saw a preview for The Kingdom, that looks good as well. Recently I've seen Die Hard, which was excellent, Transformers, which was so-so IMO, and License to Wed, which was cute. Oh, and Introducing the Dwights (at a screening) which had it's moments, but was only so-so.

The Houston Hairspray on the Edwards Grand Palace was also messed up. There was a long line of people with Evites and non-Sebastian cards. They held us back and only let in the Sebastian people, telling us that Sebastian bought out the house and their "specially invited guests" would come in first, but if there were any seats left we'd get them. At 6:40 we were told there were none left. IF NEW LINE CINEMA SOLD OUT THE THEATER TO SEBASTIAN INSTEAD OF OFFERING SEATS FOR A SCREENING, THAT E-VITE SHOULD HAVE BEEN REMOVED. I picked up the e-vite the afternoon of the show. E-vite also has a feature to cancel, and that could have been used. There was NO chance of anyone with an e-vite getting into Hairspray that night.

The promoter acted clueless and handled the situation poorly. He said to come back on Thurs when there would be another showing, but he didn't have any passes to give out and didn't know where we could get them. Some people were irate and demanded his boss's name and phone number, which he said was Jennifer but he didn't have her phone number (yeah, right). And when asked for a business card to document the issue with his management, he said he had no business cards.

The bad part is that parking is very difficult, so almost everyone had to pay $3 to park in the garage next door. After the mob got REALLY ticked off, a theater manager told us that we could go down to the garage booth and tell them we could have our $3 parking fee back. So the HUGE mob (we're talking maybe 100 people) makes our way down to the booth. The poor guy in there was started asking us to fill out refund forms, but ran out after two people. Meanwhile he still tried to collect money from cars back up 8-10 back (probably trying to see Hairspray). The crowd waited and got angrier. Finally the parking guy's boss came and just had us put down our name and we got our $3 finally.

I e-mailed New Line Cinema to complain. They e-mailed back apologizing for the problem. The more people they hear from the better. I had trouble linking from the New Line site, but I opened the Hairspray page, and used the contact link at the bottom.

Landmark Maple (Detroit) said there would be another Hairspray screening tonight. I already have passes for No Reservations, so I am not going to try to go. If you are planning on going, I would call the theater first and ask to speak to a manager. I can see things getting ugly quickly if they lied to us yesterday about another screening being tonight.

I also e-mailed Landmark to complain, as this is the second screening in a week that hasn't gone as advertised. They responded saying Eagle Vs. Shark problems were being handled by Allied Advertising, which is in charge of most promotions. They were investigating what happened with Hairspray.

Yes, sometime you don't get in, but when they give out two screening passes for different time for only one theatre, and didn't let anyone else from the second pass in, because it wasn't booked correctly, and didn't let you know it, despite the fact that they walked back and forth counting people since 6, that is a bit unfair.

frankiejean said:Landmark Maple (Detroit) said there would be another Hairspray screening tonight.

Are you sure? Because when I left last night, the manager was saying that they had to "send the film back" or something stupid like that, so that there WOULDN'T be a screening tonight. Granted, I left kinda early after they said we wouldn't be getting in, so perhaps he changed his mind or something.

Are you going to the "No Reservations" screening at Emagine? I signed up for that but never heard from them . I'm going to see "Chuck and Larry" tonight @ the Palladium instead.

Thats what they said at 6:00. They sent a lady out to explain it again to people. I have heard different things from other people posting. I heard what she said, called the rest of my group to tell them to stay home, then I left.

Yes I won the passes from Emagine. I saw Chuck and Larry at Novi a couple of weeks back. It was okay, I'm glad I got to see it for free. They had passes sitting on the counter when we saw Introducing the Dwights.

I was at the "Hairspray" screening at Mazza Gallerie in DC last night. Sebastian hair products had their hard card passes for their hairdressers. CW Network had a few hard card passes for their viewers. Newline Cinema studio had a few hard card passes for some people, too. I had registered and printed the e-vite, and I was told that the e-mail passes would be allowed access last AFTER all of the hard card passes. I guess Sebastian had paid a lot of money for this promotion. I got in on a friend's pass from Newline Cinema studio, otherwise I would have been waiting on the side like a second class citizen.

The e-vite pass had your name printed on it. Their computer should have stopped printing after so many passes instead of continuing to issue passes. I've never had a problem with a pass printed from the computer. There shouldn't have been a problem with these types of passes in the past. There shouldn't have been a problem with these, because it showed that "New Line Cinema and Evite" invite you to this screening.

I could have gone to another screening in DC at the Georgetown location, but I gave that pass away. The Georgetown screening had quite a number of sponsors which made me think that this would be a mess. So, I attended the Mazza screening with the E-vite pass.

Total mess in SF! 2 lines, 2 times = 2 shows. That was the thought. However, it was 1 show. Usually people just leave when they don't get in, but this was the worst I seen in all my freebie movie screenings. Talk about pissed off people. It was bad.

Fortunately, Noah picked these 2 cows to join his boatride and my gf and I got to see it with the printed pass. From the view inside the theatre, I was surprised that the riot didn't end the screening. People should have fought harder and demanded not to leave until the house manager came in to explain.

For those who got a free ticket to another show, I know it killed your time, but at least you got compensated versus those who left with nothing. I would have just walked into another movie (Harry Potter, Die Hard, Knocked Up) since I was "in" and used the free pass for Hairspray when it comes out. Again, I'm not saying that makes up for lost time, but just trying to find that silver lining.

For those that couldn't get in and to avoid this from happening again, I will join in and e-mail New Line about the horrible planning.

In Dallas, we were turned away because the PR person from New Line sent out too many "extra" invites to assure a full theater. We were told (after quite a wait) that the theater had 300 seats, and the hair care company (can't remember the name) that was the original sponsor gave out 280 tix subsequent to the goofy PR rep sending out 300 additional email invites(I mean, come on, are you an idiot?), and then just about anyone else online could sign up for free passes. Thankfully, a frazzled rep of the AMC theater handed out free passes allowing us to see any film, at any time, at any AMC and apologized profusely. He was clearly embarrassed and more than a little flustered (if we do the math, he potentially had 280+ screwed people to deal with) and I really did feel sorry for him.

My major gripe (yes, gripe. I'm from Texas), is in the way the theater mgr. sat and watched us all flood in and wait in a line that was starting to look like the maelstrom at the end of POTC3, yet failed to articulate that, "I predict that nearly half of you will be completely screwed approximately one hour from now." Last I checked Nostradamus neglected to mention anything of the sort, so needless to say, we were kinda blindsided.

Additionally, even a bunch of the "golden ticket" holders surely got screwed in their seating because they were queued up in the line (y'know, like in a civilization?) and as soon as the doors opened the whole line dissolved and people were just running to the entrance. The whole scene was desperately mismanaged. Further, my suggestion to New Line is, next time you screw up, just bite the bullet. You shouldn't turn people away, who were waiting and completely unaware of your preferential admission system. Had I known about this, I wouldn't have shown up at all. I understand how preview screenings work, I've been to quite a few (even one at this same large theater), but never one that was handled like this. Bad job, New Line. Bad job.

The lady from the promotion company lied to get people to settle down and leave. She said the Evites would be honored tonight. I called the theater and he confirmed the movie is no longer there, and the only screening was last night. My e-mail response from Landmark said Terry Hines and Associates was the company in charge of the screenings.

I was at Harkins Scottsdale (Arizona) 101 for the "Hairspray" preview on Monday night, and EVERYONE with a New Line print-out was turned away, even those of us near the front of the line. Only those with a black tagboard pass were allowed into the preview. The manager provided envelopes we could address to receive free passes for another movie. This is the first time I've seen Harkins give priority to people holding a particular kind of pass. They've always honored passes from radio stations, newspaper promotions, and WAM. I appreciate Harkins' generosity in hosting MANY previews, but it was disappointing to be turned away when holding what I thought was a legitimate pass.

Same thing in St Louis. They gave out 400 passes to a hair dresser and his clients and then there were also all the ones sent out by the film studio. The Beauty shop got in first and they turned down all the paper and some of the postcard ones. I was told they would be doing two more screenings Wed and Thur.Rubadub

I looked on their website at http://www.newline.com/ but couldn't find a name to contact directly.

The more people that send emails directly to new line, the better for all of us! We know that it is a free movie and you MAY not be able to see the film, and that's why many of us get there EARLY. However, when the whole house is supposedly bought out, then they shouldn't distribute screening passes. We didn't even have a chance and that's wrong.

What will emailing and complaining do? Are you going to stop going to the screenings? Something tells me the answer is no. They MIGHT give out less screening passes in the future, causing you to have less of a chance to get a pass to begin with. I'd rather more screening passes handed out, so that all I have to do to see the film is get there early. Once in a very rare while something like this might happen. I'll still take more passes than fewer.

interesting. i'm certainly new here, but did i get red for bringing bad news? I was just trying to save some folks another hour line wait and the labyrinthine phone system between you and a human being to speak with at AMC.

I was at the Chicago screening last night and it was insane! The guy who was by the escalators was telling people that the E-vites were fake and people who had them shouldn't even be in line. About 20 minutes later the same dude went on about how it was a private screening and the only way you were going to get in was with the hardpasses. So...around 7:15 he was rambling about how there was only 60 people in the theatre with hardpasses so there be ao good chance of getting in. 7:30 rolls around and I think may be 30% of the line got in. Then they announced the show as full, but yet people with hardpasses were getting admitted...there was a group of 10 people getting in on ONE pass! We stuck around and got passes for Chuck and Larry and some other movie, but again no passes for Hairspray. Then the dude who was giving the passes away started telling people that he saw Hairspray and it was a great movie...well the remaining crowd got even more upset and in turn got envelopes to fill out and they would be sent passes for a future movie. It was absolutely ridiculous and if they E-vites were fakes then why were they letting people stand in line?

I tried to go to the Boston screening of Hairspray tonight and pretty much the same thing occurred as in other cities. I think NewLine did a very poor job of planning this one...there were way too many passes issued for this. My pass was for 7:30 pm (from my experience, it's usually 7 pm) and we were turned away because the theater was full around 7 pm.

I have a feeling that there were two sets of passes issued, 7 pm and 7:30 pm. I wasn't too surprised that we didn't get in, since I read about past problems with Hairspray in this topic, but some people were PISSED. It's unfortunate because I've gone to 2 or 3 screenings at this theater recently and I had absolutely no problems. New Line definitely dropped the ball with the screenings of this movie.

Disclaimer: By providing links to other sites, FatWallet.com does not guarantee, approve or endorse the information or products available at these sites, nor does a link indicate any association with or endorsement by the linked site to FatWallet.com.

Members of our community may attach files to a post in accordance with the User Agreement. FatWallet is not responsible for the content, accuracy, completeness or validity of any information contained in any attached file. Files have *not* been scanned for viruses. Be especially wary of Excel files which may contain malicious content.

FatWallet coupons help you save more when shopping online. Use our Coupons Search to browse coupons and offers from thousands of stores, gathered into one convenient location.

Forums
As part of our FatWallet Community, you can share deals with almost a million shoppers in our forums. Forum content is generated by consumers for consumers. Share deals, money-saving tips, and more. It's FREE, fun, and addicting.

Support
Our customer experience team is here around the clock - real people ready to assist.